


Happenings

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Closets, First Kiss, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 04:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2053248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maes somehow ends up making out with Mustang in a janitor's closet, which is apparently the <i>least</i>-weird thing the guy is capable of.</p>
<p>[Sorta spoilers for Brotherhood/<i>Yet Another Man's Battlefield</i> OVA.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happenings

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a thing for [Hughes Week](http://roymaes.tumblr.com/post/93140560213/novanoah-an-appreciation-week-brought-to-you-by)! HOLY CRAP, A DEADLINE I _DIDN'T_ MISS! ~~Cherish this moment; we'll never get another.~~

It’s not that Mustang isn’t attractive as all get-out—he _definitely_ is—it’s just…

“I promised my mother I wouldn’t date any arrogant fuckheads,” Maes manages to gasp as he pushes Mustang back, _away_ , against the shelves bowing underneath their poorly-balanced loads of assorted crap and cleaning supplies.

Hot _damn_ , though, if Mustang doesn’t somehow look even _better_ all well-kissed and wet-red-lipped and disheveled-as-hell.  Ordinarily, that’s not an especially good aesthetic on people, but Mustang looks like something from a really high-budget smut film—or like a pinup model dragged right out of Maes’s subconscious, ripped off the page and rendered here before him in exquisite detail, down to the too-dark eyes and the artfully-tousled bangs.  He’s a _vision_.  A sexy vision.  An idol, an enchantment, a _ridiculously_ fine piece of a—

“Huh?” Mustang says stupidly, blinking for good measure.

Well, that was good while it lasted.

“Arrogant fuckheads,” Maes says.  He needs to make sure to use little words from now on.  “Can’t date ’em.  _Promised_.”

Maybe he can weasel out on a technicality, though—he doesn’t have to _date_ Mustang to be able to back him into a janitor’s closet once every, say, three hours or so.  They can have their filthy way with each other at _extremely_ regular intervals without it ever qualifying as a _date_ , can’t they?  He’s a progressive man; he believes in that sort of thing.  He can have his cake, eat it too, lick the frosting off the plate, and then go back for a second piece—why not?

There is a distinct possibility that he might be pushing his luck here.

Mustang is still blinking.  “Did… did you just call me an arrogant fuckhead?”

“Nothing personal,” Maes says.

“How can calling me an arrogant fuckhead not be personal?” Mustang says, crossing his arms, and unfortunately he _kind_ of has a point.  “You just had your _tongue_ halfway down my throat.”  He also has a point there.  “And I… Do you really _think_ that?”

There’s an odd thing happening on Mustang’s face—he’s trying to keep it completely blank, but Maes can kind of read it anyway, and the shadowy flickers of anger are getting swept aside by… hope?

“Yeah,” Maes says slowly.  “You’re good at everything and full of yourself about it.  And you’re a dick.”

Mustang… smiles.  Mustang smiles _beatifically_.  He looks like a four-year-old in a candy store being handed one of those giant swirly-rainbow lollipops after having dutifully been a good boy all day.  It is an extremely un-arrogant-fuckhead-like expression, and Maes is beginning to think that maybe he’s just cornered a raving madman in a janitor’s closet and kissed the fucker senseless, and this might end in blood everywhere and really freaky coroners’ reports.  _His_ blood, for the record.  _His_ blood, which is much better suited to making its merry way around his body and not taking any sudden detours towards the floor or the walls or the janitorial supplies in a splattering fashion, _thank you very much_.

“Thank God,” Mustang says.

Maes thinks he could probably reach the paint can off to his right fast enough to brain Mustang with it, and then the broom behind him can be used to bar the door from the outside.

“I thought it was going to be easy,” Mustang says, and now he’s slumping against the nearest shelf a little bit, which is very ill-advised given the precariousness of the whole structure; and which is also kind of… sad.  “Being here, doing this; I thought… intention was enough.  But it has nothing to do with any of that; it’s a _game_.  It’s a game based on deceiving people into thinking that you’re stronger and better and braver than you are and trying to force them to respect you for it.  Confidence—real or feigned; I doubt it matters—is the _only_ way up from here.  It’s all I’ve got.”  He drags a hand down over his face and then fluffs it through his hair, which sticks up in a way that really does not discourage the four-year-old comparison.  “It’s such a fucking _relief_ that you _believed_ it.”

At the rate Maes’s eyebrows seem to be going, they might well fly off of his forehead and go into orbit.  “You _want_ to be an arrogant fuckhead.”

“Not especially,” Mustang says.  “I just want people to think I am.  It’s the only way to get ahead.”

Maes Hughes is standing in a janitor’s closet so small that he’s nearly brushing elbows with the fellow soldier he just made out with, who happens to be batshit crazy.  Where in his life did he go wrong?  “Or you could try… getting ahead.”

Mustang gives him a supremely unintimidating glare.

“What are you so hell-bent on doing that you have to get ahead, anyway?” Maes asks, mostly to distract himself from the desire to laugh, in case derision makes Mustang goes full-homicide on him once and for all.  “I mean, I think I’d be good with running laps and eating quiche forever, if it was up to me.”

“You don’t mean that,” Mustang says, and there’s a deeply unsettling note of _certainty_ to it.  He’s seen it—what’s under the manic energy and all the blustering; the core truth smothered in jokes and obscured with melodrama.  Roy Mustang cut to the center of Maes somehow, directly and so _keenly_ that he never felt the blade.  “You’re here for the same reason I am—to change things.  To change _into_ someone who makes a difference.  To be important, whatever that turns out to mean.  To help people, save people—to _matter_.  To build something, and be a _part_ of something, and _contribute_.  But you can’t do that scrubbing floors; you have to be the one _giving_ the orders, and to get there, you have to play the game.”

“The arrogant fuckhead game,” Maes says.

This is a different smile—a roguish kind of grin, and Mustang is knee-weakeningly gorgeous wearing it.  “Damn right.”

“I see,” Maes says, and he pushes up his glasses for emphasis, but either Mustang doesn’t get the pun, or he’s pretending not to.  Probably _officers_ aren’t into the highest form of humor.  Or at least, they’re not _yet_ , since Maes fully intends to become an officer and take full advantage of ‘private’, ‘major’, ‘general’ and ‘corporal’ to say the least.  “So how exactly does tonsil hockey with a staggeringly handsome male cadet fit into your master plan?”

Mustang’s expression goes from _Look How Dashingly Noble I Am_ to _Shitfuckhelldamn_ in a quarter of a second flat.

“Uh,” he says, “it… doesn’t.”

“Ah,” Maes says.

Mustang shifts his weight and pulls at the cuffs of his shirtsleeves.  He’ll never convince anyone who counts that he’s a commander if he can’t ditch those kinds of poker tells.  “That just sort of… happened.”

“You don’t say,” Maes says, trying not to let his heart beat its way out of his chest and drop directly into asshole Mustang’s perfect hands.

Mustang is running one of said hands through his hair again—how many nervous habits can one man _have_?  “Well—I mean, it’s not like I didn’t… _want_ … it to happen.  Just that I didn’t… plan… for that.  But it happened.  And here we are.”

Maes’s heart is now doing a very silly sort of acrobatic thing.  “It could… keep happening.  You know.  If it’s all the same to you.”

Mustang starts grinning at him again, almost shyly this time.  “You think so?”

“Sure thing,” Maes says.

The grin broadens substantially.  “I’m not really an arrogant fuckhead, you know.  At least, I _hope_ not.”

“You’re on arrogant fuckhead probation until further notice,” Maes says.  “We’ll have to test the parameters of arrogant fuckheadness thoroughly—in every closet they’ve got around here, and as many of the beds as we can find.”

There is a toothiness to the grin now that makes Maes’s spine tighten delightfully.  “I don’t think we should leave out the showers.”

“Definitely not,” Maes says.  “You’re pretty sharp, Mustang.  That’s a few tally marks in the not-an-arrogant-fuckhead column—tentatively, you understand.”

“Of course,” Mustang says.  He opens the closet door, peeks out, and then holds it for Maes.  “After you.”

“Why, thank you,” Maes says.  “That’s another one—I’m keeping track.”

Mustang’s eyes do a terrible, terrible sparkle thing when he’s happy.  Maes is doomed.  “Excellent.  This is a game I might just be able to win.”

Maes starts off down the hall at a brisk enough pace that Mustang has to scramble to follow.  “Just don’t even _think_ about touching my quiche.”


End file.
